Jos Buttler considers Australia favorites to win T20 World Cup

England captain Jos Buttler stated on Saturday that hosts Australia remain the favorites to win the T20 World Cup. 

After a lacklustre three-match series against England, the reigning champions enter the showpiece cricket tournament on home soil, which begins with the preliminary round on Sunday. They lost 2-0, with the third game called off due to rain on Friday evening, capping off a run of eight matches for Australia in 26 days, three of them in India.

Australian captain Aaron Finch acknowledged that his team was "tired" and needed to rest before defending their Twenty20 World Cup title.

"I think the guys are probably a little bit tired at the moment," Finch said.

"The schedule has been so packed over the last six to eight weeks that we identified a couple of months ago that we wanted to make sure that we're in a position to be peaking at the right time of the World Cup and not beforehand.

"So it's going to be important over the next couple of days to try and freshen everyone up as much as we can," he maintained.

Buttler, whose team is on a high following a confidence-boosting build-up, insisted Australia was still the team to beat.

"T20 is one of those games that can be unpredictable, but I think history tells you that, generally, the host nation are slight favorites in big tournaments," he said in Melbourne.

"Many of us have traveled and played in Australia and know the conditions, but of course no-one is going to know the conditions or be as accustomed to them as the Australian team.

"They are also reigning champions, so you have to pick them out probably as favorites for the tournaments."

Australia is still scheduled to play warm-up game against India before entering the World Cup at the Super 12 stage on October 22 in a rematch of last year's final against New Zealand.

Finch stated that the players would be given a couple of days off before the game "where there's no cricket at all to allow our guys to recharge."

He also admitted that England "clearly outplayed us."

"With the bat, we were always just one wicket down further than we needed to be over the whole series," he said.

"In big run chases, you need that one in batter towards the back of the innings and we probably were just falling a little bit short each time with that. All in all, we're not bad, just a little sharpening up would be nice."

Despite the series loss and the grueling build-up to the World Cup, Finch is confident his players will be ready for their difficult opener.

"We can't control what's already gone," he said.

"We know how hard the guys train. Each person trained really well individually, and as a group, we trained fantastically.